Jul 8, 01:46 AM
Fourth of July in Tanzania
Since my roommates and I are all American, I decided we really needed to have a Fourth of July party at our house. I was most excited because I love fireworks and I figured they probably wouldn’t be illegal here. The other provisions we made for the party included a crate of Coca-Cola and some rum to go with it, a bunch of apple pie from a local restaurant, and some used t-shirts I found that had American-ish themes on them. Kitschy.
Used clothes are very common around here, but I’m not sure what exactly it says that I was able to find five patriotic American t-shirts among the wares of a few different Tanzanian vendors in about ten minutes of searching.
Finding the fireworks actually proved a lot trickier. At first a taxi driver said he knew a guy who knew a guy, but that fell through, so I ended up basically hiring a couple of local teenagers, Richard and Jonas, to run around and find a shop that would have some fireworks this time of year. They’re common around New Year’s, but out of season right now.
The boys found a place, but the shops here close for lunch and then for the night at 5:00, so having to be at work made it all but impossible for me to get to the shop that had the fireworks. It got to be a little like an adventure movie. At one point Richard and I jumped out of a taxi that was stuck in traffic and started running down the middle of the road only to find the shop closed for lunch. Then the three of us were knocking on doors in an apartment building to try to find the Indian shopkeeper and ask him to open up and sell some fireworks. We interrupted the lunches of several shopkeepers, but never found the one who owned the right shop. So I ended up just waiting for it to open and being a bit late to return for work (with my boss’s permission).
Then we had the party, and it was awesome, though the fireworks were rather tame. They were just some lady finger firecrackers and some sparklers. They were were loud enough, however, to bring the Polisi.
We promised the officers we were done for the night, and thankfully I didn’t get shaken down for a bribe or have to spend the night in a Tanzanian jail.
Firecracker Granny must be proud! Good job!
— Beth Jul 9, 04:02 PM #